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A Skype Founder and a Famous Smoothie Maker Swap Tales in London

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A Skype Founder and a Famous Smoothie Maker Swap Tales in London

By Mark Scott April 1, 2014 4:59 pmApril 1, 2014 4:59 pm

Photo

Niklas Zennstrom, a co-founder of Skype, third from left, with several members of London's start-up and technology community at the Startup Kitchen, which helps incubate entrepreneurial ventures.Credit

LONDON — On a wet British morning, small groups of entrepreneurs sat huddled around tables in a converted warehouse in East London, swapping advice and stories about their companies.

Among the young founders, drawn mostly from the neighborhood surrounding the British capital’s thriving technology community, sat Niklas Zennstrom, a co-founder of Skype.

Over three hours, Mr. Zennstrom and Richard Reed, a co-founder of the British smoothie maker Innocent Drinks, shared business advice and marketing tips with the small business owners, including the founder of a local fitness company and a maker of custom bike clothes.

The goal was to spread knowledge from London’s burgeoning tech community to the wider business sector, which has yet to be touched by the city’s growing reputation for start-ups and innovation.

More important, it was an attempt to build relationships between the British capital’s tech entrepreneurs and those — particularly in the poorer areas of East London — who do not feel part of the rapid economic growth of companies like King Digital Entertainment, the maker of the Candy Crush franchise, which has a large office here.

“Entrepreneurs are by nature curious people. I want to help build London’s entrepreneurial ecosystem,” said Mr. Zennstrom, who has backed a number of Europe’s most successful tech start-ups, like the Scandinavian game companies Rovio and Supercell. “You get inspired when you talk to them about their problems.”

While London’s tech scene has yet to feel the same level of resentment as its California cousin, tensions are steadily growing between the haves and the have-nots.

In Shoreditch, once a rundown neighborhood in East London, successful tech companies and co-working spaces from the likes of Google have sprouted over the last five years.

That has led to an influx of property developers, high-end bars and restaurants and other amenities for the throngs of hipster 20somethings who have descended on one of London’s still most impoverished areas.

In a sign that Shoreditch has become increasingly gentrified, the average house price in the area, for example, stood at $832,000 at the end of 2013, or a 17 percent increase over the same period a year earlier, according to the British lender Nationwide.

Over the same period, however, the level of child poverty in the area remained one of the highest anywhere in London, according to the Child Poverty Action Group, a local charity, while unemployment now stands around 11 percent, well above the national average.

To build bridges between the two communities, a group of local tech founders has started to run monthly programs to connect successful entrepreneurs with those who either have nontech businesses or who want to start their own company.

Run out of a warehouse owned by a local government agency, the program also is working with a London charity to connect the city’s youth with mentors from the tech world who can help them gain skills to potentially join one of the many start-ups now active in the British capital.

“We’re trying to successfully integrate the tech scene with the wider society,” said Jason Goodman, founder of Albion, a local digital media agency, who organized the recent mentor program involving Mr. Zennstrom. “You don’t need to be a bleeding liberal to know that’s a good idea.”